A realization about my uBPD sister and self-love

[LonelyOnly77]

I was talking to my therapist of two years last week about my high-functioning, but uBPD younger sister and my belief that her deep hatred of herself is the reason why she sabotages relationships.

I told my therapist how there have been times she's referred to very close, long-time friends as "losers" or "boring," ignoring their great qualities (like kindness and loyalty) because they aren't "exciting." I always thought someone being unexciting was a weird reason to dislike someone, but my therapist suggested that perhaps this is more about rejecting the healthy person outright because on some level she does not believe she deserves happy, healthy relationships, so she rejects "good" people before they can abandon her, which is her fear.

Realizing her self-hatred has distorted her worldview so terribly that she has never been able to distinguish "boring" good people from "exciting" narcissists and other drama kings/queens, was an eye-opener for me. I never understood why she couldn't make connections but she's the one rejecting anyone who might be a good friend or partner to be hurt, over and over, by "exciting" awful people.

The only reason I think she "liked" me for as long as she did was because I used to be "exciting," in that I used to have a lot of turmoil and drama in my life that was self-inflicted due to my illness, but I've had my stuff together for at least more than a decade now and I think the last straw for her was when I found I had nothing to complain about anymore after I met my partner and fell in love. I'd been financially insecure for years, but my career finally corrected that. I'd been single since my divorce two decades ago, and this relationship has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. Because she's always been a little competitive with me and I've always felt guilty for being "our mother's favorite," we've been in this push and pull for years, and after our mom died in 2018 and her divorce in 2021 she's been in a steady decline as she's grown angrier and more entrenched over familial drama that happened 30 years ago or more. All the drama boils down to our parents being too hard on her while also being not present for her emotionally. Our dad was home but not involved, and our sickly mom became less of a presence as well, expecting her to "grow up" when she was 9, making her feel unwanted and abandoned. Add that to my dad favoring our eldest sister and our mom favoring me, and you had a mess ripe for self-loathing.

I'm a strong believer that if someone doesn't love themselves it doesn't matter how much you love them back, they aren't capable of loving you. They don't even know how. It's been hard accepting that my sister is sick, but I have accepted that this is beyond my control and her current estrangement from me (her choice) is also beyond my control. I just have to accept it and hope that maybe, someday, she has some introspection and reaches out.

[LonelyOnly77]

FYI: Some background on my sister and me...

Both of us are in our 40s and have mental health issues, although my Bipolar disorder was diagnosed back in 2005 and I took that diagnosis seriously, doing the work of rebuilding my life after a traumatic divorce. My sister has been diagnosed formerly with CPTSD, depression, and anxiety, but often ditches therapy when she's not "in crisis," so they never get too deep, and nothing ever gets resolved. I started to think she had BPD years ago, but she was so high-functioning that I dismissed it. I also feel like she may have body dysmorphia and adult ADHD (everything academic or work-related is hard for her even though she eventually succeeds), she also has serious control issues and takes them out on her own body. She's very athletic and fit but hates her looks and has disordered eating habits.

My sister and I were super close for more than a decade after her only child was born, but recently she became estranged from the entire family, cutting us all off. I know why she stopped speaking to our father and eldest sister because she told me (when she was still speaking to me) that she was upset over them being "too nice" to her child's father (her toxic ex) at a band concert. I don't know why she cut me off though other than she likely felt she couldn't NOT talk to everyone else and still talk to me when I'm still close to the rest of the family with no intention of ever walking away from them.

My sister is very accomplished (three degrees, good job, homeowner, a wonderful 12-year-old son, etc.), but has never seen herself that way and when we were still speaking she was stuck in a loop about how much more accomplished I am and how she was the "dumb one" growing up. (I rent and have only one degree, but I have a much more prestigious C-suite-level job. Also, she was/is not "dumb." She just had a harder time in school because at the time she didn't value reading, and again, may have ADHD.) My sister also "hates" her looks and body, routinely putting herself down as not attractive even though she dresses provocatively to play up her looks and is very beautiful.

Where she has consistently struggled has been in maintaining healthy relationships. She attracts narcs, including her child's father and, years later, her ex-husband who she recently divorced. Both relationships were toxic, full of fighting, sometimes physical. Both exes — who are degenerates — are still "obsessed" with her and stalk and/or harass her despite her largely being no-contact with them. She has no close friends, as, again, she attracts narcs and those relationships always implode after a year or two. She dislikes most of our extended family (largely for superficial reasons like "Aunt So-and-So is nosy" or cousin such-and-such is "weird.") She had deep issues with our 82-year-old father because he can't/won't acknowledge what a nonfactor he was in our lives as kids and how that affected us. Me and our older sister have accepted our father is flawed and forgave him years ago. Outside of this, he's a wonderful grandfather to her son, his only grandchild. And even though she isn't speaking to him, her son spends every weekend with him.

With all those fractured relationships, I was her only friend, according to her. And now I'm nothing because she cut me off.

That said, thank you for reading. I still and will always love my sister, but she's chosen to make this love a one-sided one, and that hurts sometimes. So I just have to remind myself this is the disease talking and she has to want to change to have the peaceful, drama-free life she claims she wants.

I get sad because I'm afraid since she's so high-functioning, she'll probably never change and spend the rest of her life bitter and isolated. (We had a few relatives like this too. They had no one and it was pretty sad when they became elderly.) I know she wanted more for herself, but because she lacks introspection and self-love, she may never get it.

It's just a tragedy.

[Joyinrepetition]

Thanks for sharing all of this. Although it’s my step daughter (DSD) who has BPD, my biological daughter struggles to understand the dynamics behind why her half sister, my DSD has cut her out of her life for a seemingly very trivial reason, and barely manages to send back a message when my daughter sends her one. But yet my older SD, who I suspect has undiagnosed BPD, is my DSD’s very favourite family member, because apparently she was ‘there for her’ when she needed her, but none of the other family members even knew she needed help! Older SD just stepped in and helped without telling any of the other members of the family! DSD claims none of the family care about her, apart from USD, which of course is total nonsense. It’s such a hard, hurtful condition to deal with. DSD says her father prefers all his other children over her and she is the only sibling who isn’t valued, which again, isn’t true at all. She keeps bringing up the past when she was a teen, and her behaviour was so out of control, she had to be in residential care. But my goodness the whole family tried so hard to help her! She doesn’t see this though and we are all ‘bad’ and she is still upset about things that happened 20 years ago. But yet there have been periods where her mood has been pretty even and we’ve had a good relationship, and she even apologised for her behaviour as a teen. So it’s all so confusing!

[Notwendy]

One of the characteristics of drama is emotional reactivity. I think this is a part of the feeling of connection in a relationship with a disordered person. I noticed that when I worked on this and emotionally reacted less often to my BPD mother- the relationship felt dull by comparison.

I have read about two kinds of romantic pairs with someone with BPD. Each has their own dynamics. The BPD-NPD pair is unstable with lots of reactivity. The BPD-Enabler pair is more stable but has its own dynamics. Abuse is a cycle with its own ups and downs. I have heard it compared to the high and lows of a drug.

I have also read that we "match" our partners emotionally in some ways. This might also apply to other relationships as well. It may be that you "matched" your sister better when you too were dealing with your own mental health issues but now that you have done the work on yours- you no longer have that "match". You also have better boundaries and know that toxic behavior isn't good for you. Your own mental health is priority. For your sister, this may feel "boring" and also possibly challenges her own self image- since you have accomplished improvement.

Good for you for this important self work!

[CC43]

Lonely,

I'm so glad it seems you have been making progress on dealing with issues, as well as gaining insight into the relationship with your sister.  If she does have BPD, I imagine that your relationship with her has been strained at times, and that she can make things very difficult, potentially impacting your entire family.

I confess that I have a slightly different take on your sister.  While I generally agree that self-hatred afflicts people with BPD, I think her feelings about others might have a different dimension, one of projection.  It may be that when she says she dislikes boring people or "losers," she might effectively be saying, she's worried that SHE's a loser, a fatal flaw in her mind.  Maybe she's drawn to "exciting," accomplished people, because she feels she'll become more accomplished by proximity or osmosis.  Maybe she's living vicariously through the exciting lives of others.  Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wanting to be around exciting people, but it could become problematic if, say, she becomes obsessive about it, or rejects others who aren't exciting, or openly criticizes others for being boring in her opinion.  Anyway, I can't help but wonder if her criticisms mirror what she thinks about herself.  Does that ring true?  Projection of feelings is a very common feature of BPD.  I think it happens because the self-talk of someone with BPD is very negative and borders on the obsessive.  Since she is consumed with an idea (for example, of being a loser), most everything she sees is through this lens.  She becomes hyper-attuned to detecting signs of losers and avoiding them.

In addition, I'd say that your sister might be drawn to discussing various dramas in your life.  I bet that she revels in seeing you struggle, because that way, she feels a little better about herself.  Misery doesn't love company; misery loves miserable company.  Now maybe the drama in your life doesn't qualify as misery, but to your sister, she's probably looking for any sign of struggle or trouble.  She loves that.  I can identify with the phenomenon because I have a sister who has been going through a rough patch in her life.  Most of our conversations revolve around her issues--she loves to talk about them, in exquisite detail, practically non-stop.  She doesn't have much interest in discussing what's going on in my life, UNLESS it's a problem that I'm experiencing.  Then she's completely engaged.  She might even inject some of her venom and criticism, which seems like an attempt to amplify the issue, stir the pot so to speak, and maybe even make things worse.  In the process, sometimes she makes me feel worse or stressed out, though I usually try to cut the conversation short when this happens.  You see, I think she likes to see me struggle, so that she doesn't feel so alone or dysfunctional.  Make sense?

Just my two cents.  All my best to you.

[Notwendy]

This is an interesting observation. I recall my mother seemed to me interested in any personal challenges. As a teen, I asked to speak to a counselor. My mother seemed eager to set that up and seemed to like the idea. When I had some post partum depression after one of my kids was born, she told people "how depressed" I was.

I've been willing to seek out counseling if I felt it would be helpful. I knew that my FOO environment was different and this was someone objective I could speak to. All of these times have been situational- to help with a current situation, not long term. I think that somehow me seeing a counselor felt validating to my mother because, then she isn't the one with the "problem".

[TelHill]

I told my therapist how there have been times she's referred to very close, long-time friends as "losers" or "boring," ignoring their great qualities (like kindness and loyalty) because they aren't "exciting." I always thought someone being unexciting was a weird reason to dislike someone, but my therapist suggested that perhaps this is more about rejecting the healthy person outright because on some level she does not believe she deserves happy, healthy relationships, so she rejects "good" people before they can abandon her, which is her fear.

Realizing her self-hatred has distorted her worldview so terribly that she has never been able to distinguish "boring" good people from "exciting" narcissists and other drama kings/queens, was an eye-opener for me. I never understood why she couldn't make connections but she's the one rejecting anyone who might be a good friend or partner to be hurt, over and over, by "exciting" awful people.

LonelyOnly,

I appreciate you posting this. My brother has bpd and is a fairly high functioning bpd with an advanced degree and a long term good job at a non profit. He also calls some people with good qualities losers. He has some platonic male friends who are narcissistic, bad boy types who wouldn’t be a typical type of friend I’d match with a quiet man who works for an arm of the Catholic Church. . I couldn’t figure out why he chose these friends before you posted what your therapist said.

He’s a quiet bpd who is passive aggressive. He is/was the golden child of the family while I’m the scapegoat. Our bpd mom did abuse him too so he’s maybe an 80% golden boy. . I believe he received a lot of pressure to be the good and smart person of  the family while— our star.It may have been unrealistic and damaging. I think it just added to the bpd wiring he was born with.

In addition, I'd say that your sister might be drawn to discussing various dramas in your life.  I bet that she revels in seeing you struggle, because that way, she feels a little better about herself.  Misery doesn't love company; misery loves miserable company.  Now maybe the drama in your life doesn't qualify as misery, but to your sister, she's probably looking for any sign of struggle.

That’s an excellent observation, I agree! I missed the obvious that my brother had a personality disorder due to my mother’s over-the-top bpd behavior and he was helpful when needed. Because of this I trusted him when I went through my terrible and scary divorce. I put him on a pedestal. I had to leave the area to be safe. He offered to help any way he could. This is when he started to make ‘mistakes’ handling my affairs which cost me thousands of dollars to correct.  It’s taken me a very long time and many more painful instances of gaslighting and manipulation to see he didn’t have my best interests at heart after all.   

[LonelyOnly77]

Just checked here after seeing my uBPD sister for Thanksgiving and didn't realize you all had responded to this. I really appreciate everyone's POVs here.

Some thoughts:

While I generally agree that self-hatred afflicts people with BPD, I think her feelings about others might have a different dimension, one of projection.  It may be that when she says she dislikes boring people or "losers," she might effectively be saying, she's worried that SHE's a loser, a fatal flaw in her mind.  Maybe she's drawn to "exciting," accomplished people because she feels she'll become more accomplished by proximity or osmosis.  Maybe she's living vicariously through the exciting lives of others.

My sister definitely thinks she is the "loser." So much so, that she's mostly attracted to tumultuous people she feels she can be "superior" to. She's not conscious of this though. While she is successful, smart, beautiful, and accomplished, most of the people she has dated or befriended have, literally, nothing going on for themselves. They tend to be under-educated, poorer financially than her, and, at times, liars or completely dysfunctional. She tends to not like high-functioning or successful people at all, assuming they will judge her or reject her. Instead, she adopts "strays," tries to rehabilitate them, then is shocked, SHOCKED when it turns out they resent her, are selfish, or controlling, and are taking advantage of her. They often hate themselves and resent her for thinking she's "smarter" or "better" than them. Her child's father never finished college and is an alcoholic with multiple DUIs. Her ex-husband barely had a high school diploma and was unemployed. In both cases, she tried to "fix" their lives, then was disappointed/angry in how ungrateful and abusive they were. I think she thinks if she "saves" someone, they will return with love and gratefulness, but that's just not how disordered people work. My friends, who she rejected, were all kind, smart, successful people with stable lives. They're not perfect. They have their own issues, but they're not toxic. And I think that lack of toxicity, plus her insecurities, made her label them as "boring" or she rejects them for completely superficial reasons (they don't wear "nice" enough clothes, they don't like "clubs," etc. ignoring that she's a homebody who doesn't go anywhere). She just comes across as really immature in her thinking despite being 44 years old.

One thing that's been hard for me to be completely honest with myself about is how unhelpful she actually has been to me when I needed her or was in crisis. She usually disappears, only to return when she "needs" me because she's in crisis again. When I went through my own terrible marriage, I chalked it up to her being young and going through her own crisis. But as the years went on, she simply was not there when I needed her. Especially when I was at my sickest. Like, when I moved back home in 2007 because of my illness and I had hoped to see her or spend time with her, as she too was living with our parents. She moved out ahead of me moving in, living with her crazy boyfriend/future father of her child, and I barely saw her. Mind you, this was after I'd gotten out of a mental hospital and left my job of five years and was desperate for any connection to keep me anchored to the world. In working on my memoirs (I'm writing a book), I realized I didn't really have anything to add that she did during this terrible time in my life, or other than disappear on me.

When my sister and I became close it was because she was pregnant and I wanted to be there for her and my unborn nephew. And for about 12 years, we were good, but she seemed to only get angrier and more dysfunctional after she met her future ex-husband and after our controlling, but loving, but kind of unstable mom died in 2018.

I did see my sister at Thanksgiving last week and she barely spoke to me. In fact, because she wasn't getting along with me or our eldest sister, she didn't speak to either of us, choosing the path of least resistance by talking to our dad, who she claims to also hate, the whole time. Mostly because our dad is passive out of guilt and will do anything, put up with anything to keep the peace. Seeing her ignore everything and not address me or anything that has happened over the last six months, was very hurtful to me. I wanted to talk to her, but also was really angry, angrier than I'd ever been, at her and didn't know how to talk to her without yelling or having a meltdown. I had to have surgery in August and she, a year ago, had promised to be there for me or ever come here to care for me after my surgery. Instead, she ignored me, abandoned me, and never checked on me at all. She was long ghost ahead of that surgery I went through and that hurt me more than anything. In fact, I was angry at both of my sisters because neither were willing to be there, but forgave my eldest sister because she at least called and sent flowers. My youngest sister did nothing and pretended like I didn't exist.

Since August, I have written her, texted her on her birthday and tried to check in to no response. Then I learned she had started talking to Daddy and our eldest sister again, responding to her birthday text, while I got nothing. Again, I did nothing to her. She accused our father and older sister of "betraying" her by being polite to her ex, but me, who doesn't even live in the same state and did nothing but try to be supportive, was not worth talking to. But I get why she wouldn't want to. Both my dad and sister are not close to her, don't demand anything of her, and don't hold her accountable. She knows if we talk I'm going to ask her why she did this and what her problem is, and she's, fundamentally, a coward when she's in the wrong. So this stalemate could honestly last forever. Which makes me even sadder, because what an incredible waste. I wish I could have just confronted her, but part of me knows it wouldn't have made a difference, she likely still would have abandoned the relationship rather than be held accountable for her actions and ask for forgiveness. She doesn't want to do the work or change or have a better life. Doing that would mean admitting she made these choices.

My boyfriend, who witnessed all this over Thanksgiving, thinks she's "getting off on having power over me," but I don't think that's what's happening. I think she's scared of me. The whole time she was home she could barely speak above a whisper and couldn't look anyone in the eye. She wanted to be invisible. She left before we ate dinner, leaving her son there with us. I was visibly upset AFTER she left, but I know my dad and eldest sister will never say or do anything because they're so passive and don't engage with her, so she'll never know. When I talked to my dad afterward, he told me I should have just yelled at her, said what I felt, if it meant I would have felt better, even if it would have been a dysfunctional thing to do in front of her 12-year-old son, and he's right. But it does make me sad how NO ONE cares to intervene or say anything, including her, so it's all on me if I want anything to change. It's exhausting. I do most of the most of the emotional labor in our family since our mom died and it really wears on me.

Because of this, I think I'm just going to stay in New York for Christmas. Maybe I'll feel different in a day or week or month from now, but right now, I'm just tired. I don't want to fight with my family. I want to enjoy and love them, but it's a one-sided love. I just feel so alone. I'm grateful I have my friends and my boyfriend, but nothing will ever replace the love of a family. I guess I just have to accept with my mom gone, whatever semblance of a family I had is gone. I have my elderly father, and that's kind of it. When he dies, I'll probably never see either of my sisters. I'll never understand why though or why they don't want to have a family. It'll never make sense to me, but that is the future I am facing... alone.

[Notwendy]

Dad was the glue to the family. My BPD mother has not acted like a mother to me. Dad was the acting parent. With him gone, BPD mother even "disowned" me in her legal papers. Later she "re-owned" me. At the time my father passed she told her family and friends to not speak to me.

I did grieve. Like you, family is important to me. However, I also felt that if others could dismiss this relationship with me, for no reason other than what my mother told them (whatever it was she told them) and without at least trying to contact me to hear my thoughts about it - well then, is this really "family"?

Being family doesn't give someone a pass on abusive, dismissive, or hurtful behavior. I was used to hanging on to these relationships- because they are family.

I grieved what felt like a loss but what did I lose- family who did this kind of thing? I was cordial and polite when I ran into them but didn't make the effort to contact them. I am LC with my mother.

I don't feel I "lost" anything except the illusion of family.

Some of them have recognized my mother's dysfunction and have reconnected with me. Still I feel wary.

If you don't want to go home for Christmas- you can honor that. You don't have to subject yourself to the one way caring experience. If you don't want to do nothing- send gifts and wish them well. NYC at Christmas must be amazing if you could be there ( I haven't been at that time but the stores and shows- so much to do). Do something that brings you happiness.

[LonelyOnly77]

Being family doesn't give someone a pass on abusive, dismissive, or hurtful behavior. I was used to hanging on to these relationships- because they are family.

I grieved what felt like a loss but what did I lose- family who did this kind of thing? I was cordial and polite when I ran into them but didn't make the effort to contact them. I am LC with my mother.

I don't feel I "lost" anything except the illusion of family.

Thank you, Not Wendy. What you said above really resonated with me. What I'm mourning is an illusion or something long dead, not anything that is currently real. I'm craving and reconciling with something that I can never have and may have never been real.

I know the "why" to a certain extent. But what does that even matter if no one changes? I know my father is passive and cold because of guilt, childhood physical abuse from his father, and unresolved trauma from his mom's death when he was a teen. I know my mother was all over the place because she was a caretaker for her family from age six, grew up in severe poverty, suffered abuse from her parents, and had severe, untreated trauma from all of it. I know my eldest sister is probably on the spectrum and suffering from the same controlling, impossible-to-reach perfectionism our mother imposed on all of us. And I know my youngest sister's disorder was complicated by a "death of a thousand cuts" from our parents' emotional neglect. And I know I'm an emotionally desiring/needy person who is a recovering perfectionist and people-pleaser who is trying to get off an emotional labor hamster wheel. My family never asked for my help with all their issues. They never asked for me to try to fix it. And yet, I was obsessed with fixing it because it seemed so obvious.

There is no physical, sexual, or verbal abuse in my family. There's no poverty anymore. There are no substance abuse problems. Our parents raised us to the best of their limited abilities by us never wanting for anything physically, nurturing us, cleaning up after us, feeding us, and providing for memorable birthdays, holidays, and lives. Our college was paid for and we all got cars for graduation. From an outsider's POV, our lives were objectively good. The only things our parents did not validate were our POVs and feelings, which is pretty common for having Silent Generation-era/Boomer parents. They did not do a good enough job of hiding which children they "liked" more than others (just as their parents didn't). And they could be controlling/demanding with a tendency to guilt-trip, gaslight, and trauma dump, hence why we're all such high achievers but also neurotic and, at times, rigid in our thinking.

But knowing all this literally means nothing. Ignorance would honestly be preferred at this point, because to CLEARLY see what all our problems are and to see NO ONE want to do anything to fix them is unnerving for me. All our problems could be solved in a conversation or a hug, and some minor behavior modification, but these are some of the most ill-equipped people to do all three with. They don't want to see the problem. They don't want to solve the problem. They are they're own biggest impediments to their own happiness, and yet they are inert, unmoveable, unchanged.

I love them and it hurts me to watch us all fail at this. But they seemed even unmoved by their failures. They seem to just see this all as inevitable. Maybe they all saw something I always refused to see until now. Maybe my dad was right all along.

Most people can't change and this is what it is. You accept it or move on.

So why bother?